Archives for January 2011

SAN FRANCISCO – Over seven thousand people have already signed an online petition that Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) launched Wednesday on his website to condemn Rush Limbaugh for offensive comments he recently made during his radio program. The petition calls on Limbaugh to apologize for mocking the Chinese culture and asks his sponsors to […]

Huddled over my laptop and nursing my cold with a warm roasty mug of soba cha (buckwheat tea) I was all set to write a bit about goma dofu (sesame tofu). I tried and tried to psych myself up to write about cold tofu but instead ended up daydreaming and reveling in the aroma of my tea. […]

The Nichi Bei Weekly‘s annual Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival Guide, published on April 1, offers bilingual coverage of one of the region’s most important and popular cultural events. We print 30,000 copies and distribute them around the greater Sacramento, San Francisco, South Bay and East Bay areas. A unique advertising opportunity, the guide includes […]

Got no plans for the upcoming weekend? With apologies for being so last-minute on this, here are a couple activities to get you into the environmental swing of things: For my people in Chicago, the Chicago Botanic Garden is hosting a bonsai show and accompanying lecture to “celebrate the winter season in the Japanese tradition.” […]

Hey guys, it’s time to relax, it’s the weekend and… What is this? Where did this guy come from? I really want to watch this show, just to be allowed to yell profanities at it, but alas, the UK doesn’t let me watch it legally. But seriously, when you name your documentary off of a […]

A fascinating (and depressing) article from yesterday’s New York Times: In Japan, Young Face Generational Roadblocks Unemployment is obviously a huge problem in the U.S. right now. But the Japanese job market is also extremely tough, particularly for young graduates, many of whom have difficulty finding jobs right out of college (the typical recruiting style […]

It’s been more than a year and a half since the draft Japantown Better Neighborhood Plan (BNP) was published and more than three years since the initiative was originally launched. The plan, a joint effort between the City of San Francisco and the community, is meant to govern the future growth and preservation of San […]

Los Angeles — The Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC), a member of Asian American Center for Advancing Justice, has launched a campaign to engage Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities in redistricting, the process of redrawing voting district boundaries every 10 years based on census data. APALC anchors a statewide network of AAPI […]

Since it was relegated to a garbage dump January release, expectations for “The Green Hornet” were low, despite it being a collaboration by critical darlings Seth Rogen, the screenwriter and lead actor, and Michel Gondry, the director. After seeing the film, most audiences felt they got the mess they expected. After seeing it myself, I […]

Forty-five kilometers (28 miles) off the coast of Honshu in the Sea of Japan lies an island the size of New York City. Mountainous and sparsely populated, Sado-ga-shima preserves a rural lifestyle nearly gone from the urban mainland. Drawn by this setting, a group of idealistic students moved here in the 1970s to found a […]